Hello all,

Here's another legendary string quartet group, the Stuyvesant String
Quartet, in one of their earliest recordings, that of the Bloch String
Quartet No. 1, made in 1939 for US Columbia. At the time of this
recording, the Stuyvesant Quartet consisted of Sylvan Shulman, and
Zelly Smirnoff, violins; Louis Kievman, viola, and Alan Shulman
(Sylvan's brother), cello (the two middle chairs had varying members
during the quartet's life, but the Shulman brothers were a constant
presence in the group). This recording was issued on 12 sides, 69775-
D through 69780-D in Masterworks Set M-392, but, alas, I do not have
it in this form. What I have is a crackly English Columbia set, LX
8511 through 8516 (the automatic counterpart to LX 934 through 939),
which, moreover, featured redubbings of the original matrices, XCO
25447 through 25458, adding noise to noise. But the blazing
commitment in the performance is evident even so. (This was Bloch's
only string quartet at the time of issue; eventually he was to write
five.)

Michael Gray's discographies (www.charm.kcl.ac.uk) claim that this
recording was made on October 10, 1939, but if one believes the data
in a Pearl CD issue of Elisabeth Schumann's Bach recordings (which
includes the Mass in B minor conducted by Albert Coates), the same
players were in the Victor studios on the same date (as well as on
November 22), assisting in accompanying Mme. Schumann in the "Wedding"
Cantata, BWV 202, along with harpsichordist Yella Pessl, oboist Mitch
Miller and bassist Philip Sklar. That's quite a load of playing for
one day, and so I'm a mite suspicious....

http://www.mediafire.com/?21q03ojytbn

Enjoy!

Best wishes,
Bryan Bishop